This diary isn't going to be very long, but I found a new video from the American Museum of Natural History so beautiful & amazing I thought I would pass it along.
I always like things that challenge perspective & make you think. The image to the right is the "Pale Blue Dot" photograph. It was taken by the Voyager I spacecraft in 1990, and depicts Earth from a distance of 6 billion kilometers. Astronomer Carl Sagan famously found deeper meaning in the image. He challenged people to look at the image of a speck suspended in a sunbeam & realize the sum of everything humanity has ever done, accomplished, dreamed, hoped, feared, thought, all happened on a little blue-green dot surrounded by a vast sea of darkness. It's the only home our species has ever known.
The "Pale Blue Dot" photograph & the "Earthrise" image have always given me an interesting mix of emotions. Somehow they can make you feel both proud & small at the same time.
The American Museum of Natural History has produced a video called "The Known Universe" as part of a new exhibition, Visions of the Cosmos: From the Milky Ocean to an Evolving Universe, at the Rubin Museum of Art in New York City. It's similar to the "Powers of 10" video. It begins in the Himalayas and then pulls the perspective all the way back to the edge of the known Universe.
The magic of this film, though, happens as the inky black expands. Pulling farther and farther from Earth, you see the deep blue of the Pacific give way to night as the Sun comes into focus, the orbits of the solar system shrink smaller and smaller, the constellations Sagittarius and Scorpio stretch and distort, and, as the Milky Way receeds, the spidery structure of millions of other galaxies come into view. Then, you reach the limit of the observable universe, the afterglow of the Big Bang. This light has taken more than 13.7 billion years to reach our planet, and you return, back to Earth, to two lakes that are nestled between Mount Kailash and Mount Gurla Mandhata in the Himalayas.
The structure of The Known Universe is based on precise, scientifically-accurate observations and research. The Hayden Planetarium at the American Museum of Natural History maintains the Digital Universe Atlas, the world’s most complete four-dimensional map of the universe.